Облачный Край (Cloudy Land) were one of the first USSR bands to incorporate some elements of heavy metal into their music, and generally a very unorthodox band who were ahead of their time (they even played something resembling krautrock on their early albums, while this style was almost completely unknown in the USSR back then). Formed in 1978 in Arkhangelsk, initially as a garage rock band "Мертвые Уши" ("Dead Ears") by a group of teenagers, they were active at least until 2011, when their founding member Sergey Bogaev passed away. They also were one of the first USSR bands to destroy their instruments on live shows (if memory serves, their guitarist broke a cheap guitar while being on stage at some rock festival in 1986, causing a scandal).

The story of the band started circa 1976, when Sergey Bogaev (a schoolboy back then) found out about Deep Purple and Rainbow, and decided to become a hard rocker himself. In 1978, he and his teenage friends Nikolay & Igor Lyskovsky and Oleg Rautkin finally decided to start a band, but they didn't have any instruments back then, except one acoustic guitar. This, however, didn't stop them from using primitive homemade instruments, and the result turned out to be surprisingly listenable. They've recorded two albums during 1978-80, which were remastered and released on CD in 2009.

In early 1982, they got acquainted with the members of Aquarium, one of the leading USSR rock bands back then, who were really suprised at the quality of their music played with such primitive instruments and equipment. This gave them the motivation to turn the band into something more serious. They've recorded 3 albums under their new name during 1982, still with low quality of production and mostly satirical lyrics, but that surely was a major step forward in their carrer.

This album was recorded an year later, shortly before they relocated to Leningrad from Arkhangelsk. 32 years later, it got a quite positive review on metal-archives.com, although I'm not sure if it can be considered metal. It's rather a little bit of everything: Pink Floyd- and Deep Purple-inspired hard rock with a lot of keyboards, very "punkish" sarcastic-sounding vocals and lots of folk melodies. They never took themselves too seriously (which is clearly seen from their lyrics, which are mostly satirical), but nevertheless, this recording is quite enjoyable even in 2015.

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About this blog

I created this blog mostly because I wanted to practise my English skills, and to showcase the industrial, gothic, punk, metal, neofolk and progressive rock scene of Russia/ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (especially Hungary) in the meanwhile.

As you can see, this blog doesn't take itself seriously enough, but I hope I'm doing good enough with my reviews even if my proficiency in English is limited. Along with the aforementioned stuff from Eastern Europe, I occasionally post some classic and rare albums that aren't to be missed, and generally whatever I want. Other categories of note:

* finno-ugric rarities - various music (including pop) in minor Finno-Ugric languages which I'm interested in because of my heritage. The music from Hungary, Finland and Estonia can be found under the respective categories;

* lo-fi - various poorly recorded demos from before 2000 that are of historical importance. Most of these demos come from the USSR era, so you might want to check out the USSR category as well.

As of now, I try to post only music that has already been made free by the artists themselves, or the rare old releases that are out of print. But if you're an artist and would like me to remove the download links of your work, just contact me using the form below.

Sorry, I don't do reviews by request, I don't have the time. Moreover, I think the bands that feel the need to advertise themselves by sending their demos to as many blogs as possible are usually just plain boring. If you want to contact me for any other reason, use the contact form below.

It should be obvious enough that reviewing anything on here doesn't equals endorsement of artists' personal views. This especially concerns neofolk and martial industrial. It'd be fair enough to say that I have the same approach to the political and religious topics in these genres as Laibach do.

Many of the female musicians featured on my blog are amateur models, and in many cases their modelling work is no less interesting than their music. Right now I'm working on giving it a separate section of the blog (just in case if anyone wants my review to be only about their music and not their looks). The work is in progress, check back later if you're interested.

The title of my blog comes from a song by The Kovenant (album "SETI", 2003).